Managing Qualifying Life Events During Open Enrollment

How to best handle employees who have Qualifying Life Events during your company's Open Enrollment.

OVERVIEW

The Enrollment Wizard enables your employees to process benefits changes whenever they have a Qualifying Life Event (QLE), but special care must be taken for QLEs submitted during Open Enrollment to ensure no benefits data is lost.

TIP

Need to manage new hire elections during your Open Enrollment period? Refer to Managing New Hires during Open Enrollment for more information!

QUALIFYING LIFE EVENTS

Employees temporarily lose the ability to process Qualifying Life Events when your Open Enrollment is live. The Open Enrollment life event overrides all other life events outside of your new hire window—it is the only QLE offered to employees until their Open Enrollment elections have been made and approved by an administrator.

TIP:

We recommend advising your employees to make any benefits changes for current year plans prior to Open Enrollment, if possible.

Once OE is approved, employees can process other benefits changes following a qualifying life event. However, if QLE changes have effective dates prior to the effective date of their OE elections, the employee's OE will override their QLE elections and deductions beginning on the OE effective date. In order to update OE elections, you will need to complete Administrator Change.

You can ensure the employee maintains their QLE plans and deductions by re-enrolling them in their QLE plans via an Administrator Change, with the same effective date as your OE plans. We recommend using the employee's confirmation report from Open Enrollment as a guide when processing the change.

For more information on Administrator Changes, read: Administrator Change Process Guide.

TIP:

If you have carrier feeds - it's best to keep your carrier apprised of any QLEs made during Open Enrollment, as many feeds need to be paused for maintenance. 

CASE SUBMISSION DETAILS

If you run into any issues managing Qualifying Life Events during Open Enrollment, our Service consultants can help. Submit a case in the Help Community, and include the following details:

  • Employee Name and ID

  • Name of the Qualifying Life Event

  • Effective Date for the QLE

  • A description of the changes that need to be made.